by Robert Gott
‘I see them at Mass,’ said Kevin Skakel. ‘They’re always together, but I’ve never seen them speak to each other. That woman has got some clothes, let me tell you.’
‘Do they always go to the same Mass?’ I asked, dismally attempting nonchalance.
‘Ten o’clock Mass. Every Sunday. They’ll be there today.’
‘Well, I heard that he bashes her.’
We all turned to look at Adrian.
‘That’s the word on the waterfront, is it?’ I said.
‘No need to get snippy. I’m just saying what I heard. He cheats on her and he thumps her.’ He pursed his lips in a caricature of haughtiness and added, ‘My source, I assure you, is impeccable and also well endowed, although that might not be quite relevant.’
Kevin Skakel, who despite his church-going never revealed the slightest disapproval of Adrian’s morals, said, ‘I’d believe that. She moves like a martyr.’
So he’d noticed it, too. I wondered if Mrs Witherburn had made an appearance in his dreams as well as mine.
We went our separate ways after breakfast. I walked down to the courthouse and around Queen’s Park with Arthur. I kept him informed of all that had happened, and held nothing back, not even my unsettling reaction to that briefest of meetings with Mrs Witherburn. I also expressed my relief that he would not be called upon to lie to the police and back up my alibi.
‘That might still be necessary,’ he said. ‘We don’t know what’s going on in the investigation. They aren’t amateurs.’
‘Arthur, I have to see Charlotte Witherburn again. Will you come with me to St Mary’s?’
‘I should say no. I should know by now that going anywhere with you is bloody dangerous.’
‘Come on,’ I coaxed. ‘The church is just around the corner, and it’s nearly ten o’clock.’
I had already begun walking towards it. Arthur followed and caught up with me.
‘Why do you want to see her?’
‘Because, because, because, because, because.’
‘She’s a married woman.’
‘An unhappily married woman. I just want to see her. I want you to see her, to tell me if I’m mad for thinking that she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’
‘You’ve gone troppo,’ was all he said.
People were arriving at St Mary’s in large numbers. Some were going straight in; others were hanging about the door, chatting. Arthur and I waited by the gate in Adelaide Street. Just before ten, a car pulled up — the only one to do so. Everyone else had arrived by bicycle or on foot. The passenger door opened and Charlotte Witherburn stepped out, followed immediately by the driver, who I took from his resemblance to a bulldog to be her husband. She was taller than he, and she paid him no heed as they entered the churchyard. Harry Witherburn was the ugliest man I had ever seen. His lips were fleshy and pulpy, and glistened beneath a cauliflower nose. His eyebrows were bushy, nature having decided to grow hair there instead of on his head. The mean, black marbles that were his eyes offered shuttered windows to his soul, and on either side of that obscene mouth jowly pouches hung. How could she bear to be touched by him? He must have been fifteen years her senior, and those years had not been kind to him. He wore the marks of every epicurean indulgence all over his flabby, undisciplined body. They entered the church without speaking to anyone.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’
‘I didn’t get a good look at her. Nice hat, though. He’s no oil painting.’
‘When they come out, I’m going to speak to her.’
‘I’m not hanging around for an hour. My advice is don’t speak to her, but you’re not going to listen to me. You can tell me about it later.’
I entered the church halfway through the service and stood at the back. Charlotte and Harry were sitting in the front row, right on the aisle. They would be the first to approach the altar rail and receive communion. Harry Witherburn was obviously a man who expected to be first in everything. I left the church before the end of the Mass and waited by the car. To my surprise, Mr and Mrs Witherburn did not emerge together. Charlotte came out alone. He must have loitered in the nave talking to someone. She hurried towards the car, hesitating when she saw me, and then coming over, her hand extended.
‘Mr Power, how nice. Were you at Mass?’
‘Technically, no.’
‘Goodness me, you sound like a Jesuit.’
Over her shoulder I saw her husband barrelling towards us. His face was unreadable. It was incapable of registering emotion. Whether he was experiencing an orgasm or having a stroke would only be determined after the fact. Mrs Witherburn swung round on him and circumvented whatever he was about to say by speaking first.
‘Harry. This is Mr William Power. He’s in town with his acting company.’
Harry Witherburn looked me up and down, and made a small noise somewhere between a grunt and a dislodging of phlegm.
‘He and his actors are going to do scenes from Shakespeare at our Red Cross fund-raiser.’
I did not give away that this was news to me.
‘Well, that’ll be bloody boring,’ he said. ‘But you do what you like.’
He got into the driver’s seat and started the motor.
‘So that’s arranged then,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know the date.’
They were gone before I had the chance to utter a single word.
By Sunday evening everyone had been told that we had been requested to do scenes for a Red Cross fund-raiser, and claims for the performance of a preferred party piece had been staked — every actor has a party piece.
‘We’ll decide the program later,’ I said. ‘We don’t even know the date yet.’
‘Charlotte Witherburn, Will,’ said Annie. ‘It’ll be at their house, and it’s the biggest house in town. Think what publicity this will be for Titus. My God, people might actually come.’
Later that evening, Augie grudgingly admitted that he might have been wrong about Charlotte Witherburn. But when I told him that she had made the offer out of the blue, and that she had deliberately created the impression that it had been arrived at after some discussion, he said, ‘So she’s using you against her husband.’
He seemed satisfied with this diagnosis. I was not. Augie, of course, was touching a raw spot. I was not unbruised by the recent revelation that it was not solely on the strength of my charms that Polly had expressed an interest in me. To be used by her to inflame the jealousy of the barely pubescent Patrick Lutteral had not made a significant contribution to my self-esteem. The meaning behind Charlotte Witherburn’s look when she had so daringly declared that the Power Players would appear at her benefit was of an entirely different order. There may be, as the great man said, no art to find the mind’s construction in the face, but what I saw in Charlotte’s face was a desire to escape. This was no thoughtless, adolescent game of ‘Marry me quickly’. This was sadder and perhaps more dangerous than that.
I looked at myself long and hard in the mirror before I went to bed that night. My face had healed. The only evidence of Fred’s blow was a slight discoloration of the eyelid, only apparent when the eye was closed, and a red fleck below the iris. I wished it wasn’t there. It was unsightly, but I didn’t think it would prejudice Mrs Witherburn against me. Just before I fell asleep my confidence deserted me, and I thought that after all I may have over-interpreted what was the briefest of exchanges and the most ambiguous of looks.
I changed my mind the following morning when Arthur knocked on my bedroom door and said that Mrs Charlotte Witherburn was waiting to see me in the dining room downstairs. I made a detour to the bathroom to comb my hair and check that I hadn’t missed any bits when I’d shaved that morning. Damn that red fleck.
When I entered the dining room she was silhouetted against the window so that a
t first she seemed as insubstantial as a shadow.
‘Mr Power, how lovely.’
‘Please, call me Will.’
‘Charlotte,’ she said as we shook hands and laughed lightly, as though the exchange of names was some obscure witticism. She looked about the room.
‘I’ve never been here.’
‘Well, why would you? It used to be run down. Well, more run down.’
‘I’ve heard about the food, of course. Harry would never come.’
She paused.
‘Or has he been?’
With that simple question she laid bare the intimate truth that her marriage was a charade.
‘Not that I’m aware of,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I would remember his unusual face.’
‘His face is actually his best feature.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said, and smiled.
‘I was expecting this place to be rather louche,’ she said. ‘But this is a nice room. I hope you don’t mind my calling on you. Pete Topaz told me your company was staying here, and I wanted to let you know that I was serious about the Red Cross benefit. It’s next Monday. Is that too soon?’
‘No, no, not at all.’
She called him ‘Pete’. How close were they?
‘Is there something in particular you would like us to do, Charlotte?’
‘I’m afraid my knowledge of Shakespeare is too thin to make any useful suggestions.’
She moved a little closer to me, and the sweet smell of her perfume made me a little dizzy.
‘I must apologise for the boorish behaviour of my husband yesterday. He is not a cultured man.’
I assured her that I had not taken his words personally, and hoped that perhaps we could change his mind. She laughed.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘That hope is doomed to be dashed. He may not even be at the fund-raiser. He finds such things boring. Perhaps you could come to the house tomorrow and see where you will be performing.’
‘Shall I bring the company?’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary. Shall we say eleven o’clock? We’ll have lunch’
She presented me with a card with an address printed on it.
On her way out she almost collided with Augie, who had walked in unaware that anybody was in the dining room. He was carrying a pile of tablecloths, several of which fell to the ground.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Charlotte said, and bent to help him retrieve them.
‘This is Mr Augie Kelly,’ I said, ‘the proprietor. Augie, Mrs Charlotte Witherburn.’
‘I’ve heard so much about your dining room,’ she said. ‘I must come one night.’
If Augie had intended a rebuke, it remained unspoken. Charlotte left, and as the sound of her car receded he said, ‘She’s not as uppity as I thought she’d be.’
‘Augie, she’s stunning.’
At 11.00 am I pushed my borrowed bicycle up the drive of Witherburn, an extravagant and gleaming Federation mansion, white against the deep green of the gardens around it. The house was girdled with a wide verandah of elaborate timber fretwork, with front steps that could be approached from the left or the right. The lower branches of the steps met at a landing and continued from there to double doors of intricate lattice. These doors gave access to the verandah, and beyond them lay the main door. The right-hand side of the house swelled out to form a sort of grand rotunda. The roof above it resembled a giant circus tent made of metal, and sitting right on top of it was a small lookout, circled with a wooden railing.
I turned the handle of the door at the top of the stairs and opened it. There was no one on the wide verandah. Ahead, an elegantly carved door was open. A house of this size could not be run without servants, but there was no sign of them. I took a few paces inside the house and called.
‘Hello!’
Charlotte emerged from a side room immediately.
‘Will, come in.’
I knew from the silence that we were alone, and the thrill of this was so intense that my first words were an incoherent babble about how beautiful Witherburn was.
‘My husband likes people to know that he is a rich man. Would you like a drink?’
‘It’s a bit early for …’
‘It’s never too early for champagne. It should be drunk first thing in the morning and last thing at night.’
We sat on the verandah drinking expensive champagne, and it seemed that the ease between us was the ease of two people who were already lovers. So it was without any uncertainty or tentativeness that we made our way to Charlotte’s bedroom and made love.
We lay side by side afterwards, unsurprised at what had happened. We had moved together with the unthinking trust of familiarity — Charlotte seemed almost reassuringly bored — and when she said that we would have to get dressed because the staff would be returning soon, I thought, yes, of course. We could not lie about naked, and risk discovery. The haste with which Charlotte drew on her clothes was proof of her nervousness on this point. We straightened the sheets and made the bed, and returned to our seats on the verandah, where we drank the remaining champagne and Charlotte spoke about her marriage.
‘I’ve never committed adultery before,’ she said, and in her uninflected tone I recognised that this was the truth.
‘My husband and I do not make love. We have separate bedrooms. You weren’t lying in his sheets.’
‘Why do you stay with him?’
She looked at me quizzically, as if the answer to this were perfectly obvious.
‘We’re Catholic,’ she said. ‘Divorce is impossible.’
‘Does he treat you badly?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘He’s a violent man and sometimes he …’ Her voice trailed off.
Anger welled within me. I reached out to touch her, but as I did so I heard a noise in the house, and a moment later a door at the end of the verandah opened and a woman appeared.
‘Are you ready for lunch, Mrs Witherburn?’
‘Yes, thank you, Joyce.’
‘I’ll bring it out.’
Joyce must have come up the back stairs without our hearing her. She brought us a tray of sandwiches and a pot of tea, and withdrew. Charlotte didn’t introduce me. When we were alone she poured the tea and said, ‘My husband was having an affair with that girl who was murdered.’
She took one of the small triangles of bread and bit into it. My stomach lurched and a maelstrom of emotion began to turn within me.
‘I knew that girl,’ I heard a voice say, and it was my own, but somehow separate from me.
‘Yes,’ Charlotte said, ‘I know, but it wasn’t your child she was carrying. It was Harry’s.’
Her face was impassive.
‘How do you know this?’ I whispered.
‘About two weeks before she died, before you had arrived in town, she came to see me. She said that she was pregnant and that Harry had dumped her as soon as she had told him. He wanted her to get rid of it. She said no.’
‘Why did she tell you this?’
‘She wanted me to know what kind of a man Harry was. She thought I would be shocked, that I would fall into a swoon. I told her that I knew already what kind of man my husband was.’
‘What did Polly want from you?’
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She made no demands, no threats. Nothing. She said that she wouldn’t expose Harry, that she was going to get married, and I suppose her husband would think the child was his. She was only six weeks pregnant. I rather liked her. There was something admirable in her pride. I suppose I admired it because I had surrendered mine long ago.’
‘Charlotte, does Peter Topaz know all this?’
‘Yes, of course. As soon as that girl’s body was found I told him all I knew. Harry denied th
at the child was his, but he could hardly deny the affair. There were any number of people who knew. Even the girl’s brother. He came here, too. He spoke to Harry, or argued with him. He wanted money to keep his mouth shut about the baby. Harry practically threw him down the stairs. I thought he was going to kill him.’
‘Do you think your husband killed Polly Drummond?’ I asked quietly. She didn’t answer, but stood up and walked to the verandah railing.
‘That’s him now,’ she said, and I heard the sound of a car crunching gravel in the drive. I stood up and watched as the car stopped and Harry Witherburn got out. He looked up at us and gave a strange, abbreviated, ugly laugh before heading up the steps.
‘Why do you stay with him?’ I whispered.
She turned eyes bleak with defeat towards me and said, ‘Where would I go?’
When Harry Witherburn opened the doors at the top of the steps he passed through to the front door of the house without speaking to us. He cast a brutish glance our way and disappeared inside.
‘You’ll come again,’ said Charlotte.
‘Of course,’ I said.
She kissed me lightly on the lips and followed her husband into the dark interior of Witherburn.
I cycled to Wright’s Hall, where the company was rehearsing in my absence. I was glad to be distracted from the tumult of feeling that had been unleashed by my visit to Witherburn.
‘It’s a huge place,’ was all I said.
At midnight I knocked on Arthur’s door. He was lying on his bed, reading, wearing only a pair of khaki shorts. In my presence he was unselfconscious about his ruined torso, but he rarely allowed anyone else to see it. I had become so used to it that the puckered skin and truncated shoulder no longer caused me a sympathetic shudder at the pain he must have endured. I told him everything that had happened that day. Everything.
‘And Topaz knows all this?’
‘He doesn’t know I made love to Mrs Witherburn.’
He was exasperated by my literal-mindedness.
‘He knows all the other stuff? He knows that Polly was pregnant and that Harry Witherburn was the father?’
